Good day nice people.
I, like many I’m sure, am taking Microsoft’s discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.
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Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I’ve seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn’t come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?
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One of the more salient differences I’ve seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I’m switching is due to Microsoft’s forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?
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I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I’d like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is “mature” (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn’t fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.
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Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?
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In terms of UI and workflow I really don’t mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.
My use case: I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.
Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):
- Gaming including emulation
- Firefox
- VLC
- Spotify
- Discord
- Godot
- Visual Studio
- Git
- Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
- Misc “Tinkering” (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.
Yeah sure but they do force snap for some packages (while making it look like apt running) and it isn’t ideal. I don’t see any reason to use ubuntu over debian unless I’m some corporation that needs to run the same version for 10 years with their subscription.
The main reason for Ubuntu against Debian is the packages. For Ubuntu, they’re much newer, and with PPAs (launchpad.net), you can often get more and/or newer packages built by other users. For debian, good luck, you’re stuck with old packages (which is the intent of Debian stable, but not nice as a user, that’s for server)
I do. The last time I tried it, Debian’s installer crashed and left me with a white screen. Imagine telling a newbie to wipe their disk before that happens. Linux has lost a user for life. Debian’s site is still completely archaic, so the pre-installation funnel is going to be a challenge in itself for most people. No way.
To be clear, I used Debian for years, I love their mission and I want it to be the reference FOSS distro. But beginners need hand-holding and Debian is not ready for that yet.
Just use LMDE.
i’ve never used linux mint and i’m curious, how does it differentiate from debian? Might not matter much, but i recall hearing they have their own package with the xedit name so one can’t install the original xedit and that’s not really great packaging.
Mint has a bunch of tweaks to make it more approachable. Apt assumes Sudo, typing passwords shows stars, little things that usually trip new users.
The core packages, including the desktop environment are much more up-to-date than Debian. This addresses one of the core short-comings of Debian while maintaining most of its strengths. LMDE comes with Xapps as well, the core user applications.
That’s weird, I’ve made over 20 fresh debian installs and they were all successful without such glitch. The commandline installer is more stable though. (had a few displaying distorted screen in gui mode for some reason)
Sure, perhaps it was the hardware, perhaps I just got unlucky. But Ubuntu worked flawlessly and thank goodness. Unfortunately this is not the kind of experience one forgets.